Tempo in Turn Based Games

So I've been thinking a lot about turn based games, specifically RPGs, but I've really been looking outside the box lately. Currently, I'm looking at the idea of 'tempo' and why in most modern turn based - single player games - the concept is largely absent.

Tempo is a simple idea, in a two player game, one player makes a threat and the other player makes a counter threat. Whichever player has more 'threat' has tempo. The very best turn based games have the opportunity for dynamic tempo swings, which make the games exciting and interesting.

The simplest game with 'tempo' is probably tic-tac-toe. When one player gets two in a row, he threatens a win, and demands a response. Although tic-tac-toe is so simple it's kind of broken, a slightly elaborated version, Connect 4, is actually a kind of great game.

The most famous 'tempo' driven game is certainly chess. Here many pieces exert influence on many squares, and players trade threats and counter threats with each move. Although Chess is overlooked as slow and kind of boring these days, this dynamic back and forth core is a large portion of the reason Chess lasted hundreds of years as a beloved game.

More modern turn based competitive games featuring tempo would include CCGs, MTG and Hearthstone, again, one player makes a threat, the other responds and provides counter threat.

This really core game play mechanic is entirely absent in every modern RPG. The back and forth, tempo driven gameplay, is replaced entirely by other mechanics.

My questions are:
#1 - is there an example of an RPG that features tempo driven, back and forth, combat? (Threat, Counter threat, Counter counter threat...)
#2 - if not, can there be, and how would something like this work?

 

That's a really interesting point!

I think you certainly could have tempo in an RPG. In tic-tac-toe and connect-4, at least among novice players, the tempo threat is one of immediate loss. But in Chess, the threat can be something much more nuanced; the loss of a valuable piece, for example. Ignoring the threat doesn't mean the end of the game, but it could be costly. This is even more apparent in Go (where the concept is called sente), where immediate win/loss in the early game is impossible, yet you are constantly hounded by threats of a weakened position, which could ultimately cost you the game.

So, in an RPG, I think it would be more like that: not threat of immediate win/loss, but threat of damage to your strength/position. And I think it would require attacks that take more than half a turn to execute (and this is probably where virtually all RPGs fail on this point). I see the enemy starting to cast Flaming Hand of Fiery Doom, and I have a chance to dodge/counter in some way that can negate that damage — but in so doing, I pay the opportunity cost of not being able to do something else.

The tricky bit is to provide for a way to change tempo. For example, this is obviously broken: party A attacks, party B defends, and repeat. In other words, if I can negate the damage, and that simply frees the attacker to attack again, we get stuck in an attack-defend cycle that can't be broken, except perhaps by tiring of it and accepting the damage at some point.

But I don't think you need to add a whole lot more complexity to avoid this broken case. If some attacks take even longer to set up, or some counters both avoid the damage (or some of the damage) and set up a counterattack at the same time, then you have opportunities to take tempo away from your opponent, at least for a while.

(Now that I think of it, the same concepts come up in martial arts. Beginners are taught to block an incoming punch, but that's really not a great thing to do, because it leaves the initiative — the tempo — with the attacker, who will simply throw another attack. More advanced students are taught to take the initiative by blocking and countering at the same time, or not blocking at all, though this is more difficult to do. Or, you block with such force that the block itself becomes an attack, reducing the attacker's ability to continue.)

It's not exactly an RPG, but tactical games like Disgaea have some of this. Position on the board is very important because all the attacks are spatially restricted, as in Chess. So, you can apply or avoid threats by moving around on the board. However, all attacks execute in half a turn, so you don't really have much opportunity to see an attack coming and avoid it — perhaps it'd be a better game if you could?

 

The game I'm working on sort of uses tempo.
So there are 6 lanes to battle in. I have it set up so if you deploy in an unopposed lane, the unit must wait a turn before they attack. Whereas units deployed in opposed lanes can attack right away. There's no canon reason for it, it's simply to allow players the option to defend since it will take a while before they can occupy each lane.
So Threat = deployed unit in unopposed lane. Then Counter = deploy unit in same lane and attack the original. Now I'm being threatened in that lane. Or a player could choose a high defensive unit and just hold the lane, while choosing to attack one of the other open ones.
Probably not what you had in mind, but what I'm working on seemed to fit your question, so there you go.

 

Thinking of the Champions rpg, a characters speed determined how many actions they had in a turn (each turn had up to 10 phases so speed 1 had 1 action per 10 phases, speed 10 had 10 actions per 10 phases). This let players plan their actions so they could complete them before the other player had their next turn. It also let players counter a move if they had an action phase before the other move finished or if they were holding an action phase in reserve (a bit like over watch).

For balancing an rpg for things like the tempo you mentioned then I believe that something like that would be best but if you we talking about a realtime modern rpg then you would need to find a way to balance each characters actions so that they end up having a similar timing/effect as per a turn based game.

 

Of what I understand about high level play in Pokemon, a large chunk of it is mostly insane batman gambits and counter strategies (at least for the bulky builds). Whether this usually has the back and forth that you're hoping for, I would say it's rare.


It's hard to make a strength suddenly become a weakness without space. When you have front lines that contain most, if not all, of the immediate counter strategies, one hole can mean the whole formation falls apart. The closest non-strategy RPG's get to making a strength becoming a weakness is with roles, and the only games that I can think of that force you to manage roles on the fly are Final Fantasy X, X-2, and Pokemon. From the sounds of it, Overwatch has a bit of it too with the fact you can change your character on the fly.

Even with that, it's still no guarantee you end up with a back and forth. Usually the situation either spirals downward from a single mistake, or there was enough slack that it never became a serious issue. The actual ability to counter and turn the situation back to your favor is almost unheard of. Roguelikes might be the greatest exceptions, but only because the norm is to carefully think up some kind of use or solution for any given situation and by being a thousand times more complicated than a normal game.

Personally, I think a lot of it just comes down to getting the player out of the mindset that the best/only way to solve conflict is through defeating the enemies quickly, which is chiefly done by attacking with everything they've got. Break either of those (but mainly the last part), and I think you will be looking at something where this is far more possible.

 

I think this is kind of the major problem I'm trying to wrestle with.

Basically, in all turn based RPGs (or most war / fighting game) the only real strategy is to pile on as much focused damage as possible on the best target possible, then shift to the next target, focus him down, and continue. This is... well... its generally kind of boring really. It also, as you mention, creates that snowball effect. I think that instead of dealing with this, most RPGs tend to try to make this process interesting (generally they provide a bunch of damage resistances so that how exactly you pile on damage needs to change - damage resistances are super critical to most rpgs because of the importance it has in forcing variety on the player).

The reason that 'tempo' works in Chess is because:
- The threat is clear, immediate, and relatively obvious (my bishop can eat your horsie next turn)
- The clear and immediate threat happens before damage is inflicted
- The other player has an opportunity to respond

I think that in order for a game to really be 'tempo driven' it needs to allow for this kind of timing delay, a character/unit needs to be in jeopardy, without actually taking permanent damage. @JoeStrout's thought on multi turn spell casting is a step in the right direction I think. But I tend to think that really creating a game that has real dynamic tempo will take more significant breaks from RPG convention than this.

 

What it sounds like you are looking for is a way to amplify/exaggerate the risk/reward balance so the player actually needs to make considers decisions.

Maybe instead of having each character getting say 2 actions a turn like in the latest xcom game each character gets action points that go into a pool but the max each character has is just under the amount needs to take say 2 actions. The player gets to have one phase, say 1/2 their points pool, & then the enemy has their phase. Both sides set their actions & then the phase plays out simultaneously. If any character was set to do something that takes a full turn (2 or more phases) they set up but don't complete the move until the next phase, which possibly gives the opponent some indicator that something bigger is happening or perhaps that character wasn't doing anything that phase, they'll have to guess. Rinse & repeat for the 2nd (& possibly 3rd) phase.

Something like this would mean each character would be able to take say 1 action a turn & then there would be some points left over for some to take a 2nd & maybe 3rd action. So,

• does someone shoot then dodge?
• Or not do anything so the points can be used by someone else?
• Or does someone shoot & then get targeted by the enemy so the player needs to decide do they use points to save that character or sacrifice them so another can take an action?
• What happens if the enemy lobs a grenade into the middle of a group? Who do you save?

Aaaaaand, reading that again & making changes still doesn't make it very clear. Sorry.

 

What is probably the most realistic/practical approach for this is making it so that the primary method of damage dealing is essentially by comboing. You make it so that the player is manipulating "the battlefield," which ends up being the actual skill required to deal the extreme amounts of damage. Going crazy with status effects is an easy way to think about it.

Imagine entangling a foe in vines, draining the water from the vines, then casting a fire spell that now does 10x, or maybe 3x + DOT. Then on the flip side, you might want to encase yourself in dry vines to resist an incoming water attack. You would have to go insane defining properties, but it's probably the most interesting way to create a ton of counterplay.

 

Make some of those effects have a higher effect if used in conjunction with another characters powers, so the water power might stop small fires & slow bigger ones but combined with another characters cooling power it turns to ice & stops bigger fires, or the water slows movement as it is slippery but turned to ice it traps people. Perhaps all a characters powers are offensive or defensive but when combined with another characters power they can have the opposite & become defensive or offensive.

 

I think simultaneous execution has merit. These kinds of 'we go' systems definitely feel far more interactive than conventional movement systems. Personally, I love this (super rare) game system. But at core, this doesn't really present back and forth gameplay. Instead it's a high stakes guessing game. Again, I love these systems, and again, they're much more interactive.

There is something about it though that does work towards the 'play -> counter play' style. I think that at core this kind of system with simultaneous execution has events that a delay between specific orders and the events that unfold. This kind of timing gap between becoming aware of some threat, and suffering material damage from the threat occurs much more frequently in this kind of game I think.

I think, at core, this style of game play really needs some delay between the presentation of a threat and the execution of the clear and immediate threat. This delay is what gives the opponent counter play.

The obvious example is in Hearthstone or MTG, the mechanic of 'summoning sickness' is absolutely core to the game. Since after you summon your monster, the opponent has a chance to answer your threat. I've read about how when they were developing hearthstone they experimented with removing this mechanic. This seemingly small change simply broke the game.

I think this is a step in the right direction. I think the way you need to do this is by building out combos, but that building out the combos require multiple turns. The idea being that, ideally, the opposition can interrupt the combo, or delay it by creating a threat elsewhere.

I've been thinking about positional combos. Basically, formations, which might help make that kind of combo style game play work using positioning, instead of like rock paper scissors elemental effects. Maybe you combine this kind of thing with a "choose any one guy to move per turn" system (like chess) instead of an initiative queue/whole team movement and I think this has merit.

I've seen stuff like this flirted with in some JRPGs, but I've never really seen a good example of a system like that. I wonder if it could work.

EDIT: Sidenote - I do think the elemental RPS stuff has merit too. This kind of thing is super clear and immediate "Oh he is creating a pool of water. I can either freeze it, or use fire to evaporate it" could definitely be cool. This kind of thing was done to some extent in Divinity Original Sin, only they were really just using it as an offensive combo system, the idea was to just stack comboing elements on a single character for super attacks in one turn.

I think that the lack of interactivity in DoS combat was kind of a missed opportunity. They ended up crutching the combat system on the old "oil barrels in strategic locations" approach to create variety.